Boulder County Jail bookings show hundreds of DUI arrests in just three months

By Pierrette J. ShieldsLongmont Times-Call

Posted:
06/15/2013 07:39:10 PM MDT

Updated:
06/15/2013 07:40:25 PM MDT

From left: Inmate Jeddie Rae Spotted Wolf Morales, 29, of Boulder, recently sentenced for her third DUI, talks about the recovery process and how she plans to stay out of jail as Alan Forbes, 48, recently sentenced for a sixth DUI, his third in Colorado, listens in Wednesday at the Boulder County Jail.
(
Matthew Jonas
)

BOULDER -- Alan Forbes was stung when the judge called him a "menace to society."

The 48-year-old Longmont man is an inmate at the Boulder County Jail, and he is waiting for the moment he can return to his wife, visit his ailing brother, and play with his cats. He said it hurt to be called a menace because he is a loving and caring person.

Six times since he was 19, though, driving drunk has landed him behind bars, usually after he passed out behind the wheel and pulled into "imaginary driveways."

Wrecked vehicles, time in jail, stress on his family, and thousands upon thousands of dollars lost to fines, court costs, insurance, new cars and other expenses did not deter him from drinking and driving from one time to the next.

"It is just I don't think I will get caught, and you think you can make it home," he said.

He said he believes that this time will be different. Forbes credited the jail's "Transitions" program, which focuses on rehabilitation, personal responsibility, decision making, and other life skills to help offenders reintegrate into society and curb criminal behaviors. He even earned his GED in jail and marveled how the cap for his graduation contrasted with gray in his hair.

"This one is going to be my last," he said last week. "I won't be driving for a while."

Forbes is known as a "persistent drunk driver." Colorado's Persistent Drunk Driver Committee defines the term as someone who has two or more alcohol- or drug-related driving violations or someone who drives with a blood alcohol content of .17 or higher, even on a first offense.

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The legal threshold for driving under the influence is .08 in Colorado. Under the state's persistent drunk driver definition, Forbes qualified the first time he was arrested. He said his BAC was .26.

"I have a high tolerance," he said. "Unfortunately."

He also counts himself lucky that he has never physically injured or killed anyone else. He said he knows it is a real possibility and he has served time in jail alongside other DUI offenders facing homicide, assault or even murder charges.

"I am tired of it. My wife is tired of it. My brother is tired of it. My cats are probably tired of it because they miss their dad," he said. Forbes said he is an alcoholic and he never tried to stop drinking. He plans to stop this time.

Boulder County has had a number of high-profile cases in which a multiple-DUI offender has badly injured or killed others on the road. Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett's office has gone as far as to file first-degree murder charges in some of those cases. The charge can be filed in cases where an offender's behavior shows "extreme indifference" to others' lives.

Lisa Norton was sentenced to 33 years in prison under a plea deal with prosecutors, who allowed her to plead guilty to vehicular homicide and vehicular assault in a 2011 DUI wreck that left a young father dead and his 2-year-old daughter and sister with life-changing injuries. Garnett's office had filed a first-degree murder charge against Norton, who was just days into probation for another DUI at the time of the wreck and reportedly jumped into a reservoir after the wreck and tried to swim to escape. Boaters fished her out of the water and turned her over to police.

In another case, a 53-year-old man was accused of causing a DUI-related wreck last summer in Longmont that claimed the life of an unborn baby who was due within days of the crash. Suspect Gary Sheats also had multiple DUIs on his record before the crash. He pleaded guilty to two counts of vehicular assault and one DUI count. He committed suicide before sentencing. Prosecutors explored filing a murder charge against him, but the charge was out of reach under the law because the baby was unborn.

Several other cases have mounted countywide in the past few years.

"We have really seen ... how significant the public safety risk is with multiple DUIs," Garnett said.

Without accompanying charges, like vehicular assault or homicide, DUI sentences can vary from no jail time to a year in jail. Other sentences include also could options like probation, work release, day reporting, or in-home detention. Lost of licenses are common, but some are undeterred and drive without licenses or insurance.

Prosecutor Karen Lorenz said a number of factors play into potential sentences, like the number of DUIs a suspect has had, the BACs of those DUIs, and whether any previous DUIs were within the past five years.

Incarceration typically accompanies third or subsequent DUI convictions. She said Boulder courts attempt to steer multiple-DUI offenders toward rehabilitation, like the DUI Integrated Treatment Court, an intensive and closely monitored program geared to preventing additional DUIS.

Garnett noted that most people go through their entire lives without a single DUI, and that he feels a second takes effort. He said he believes there should be felony-level DUIs with the threat of lengthier incarceration times, but legislative efforts to create those laws have fallen sort.

According to the CDOT, Boulder County ranked eighth among Colorado counties for DUI offenses in 2012 with 1,017 filings. Close neighbor Adams County ranked first with 2,970 filings.

The Times-Call reviewed bookings at the Boulder County Jail for March, April and May, which included 2,215 suspects who were arrested in the county in that period. Of those, 497 had some sort of DUI, DWAI or failure to comply or appear in court for DWAI or DUI-related charges. In that time, 89 suspects booked into the jail were suspected of a second or subsequent DUI, and 59 were suspected of a third or subsequent DUI. In the first week of June, Boulder County Jail Division Chief Bruce Haas said one in five jail bookings included some kind of DWAI or DUI arrest charge. In the first weekend of June, 30 percent of jail bookings included a DUI or DWAI arrest charge.

"We have seen people with upwards of 11 DUIs," Lorenz said.

Jeddie Rae Spotted Wolf Morales, 29, has had three DUIs since 2010 and is a Boulder County Jail trustee charged with orientating others into the transitions program. She said she has come to believe through treatment at the jail that she has unresolved grief issues over the loss of family members that has led her to seek solace with alcohol. She lost a career to the DUIs and is looking forward to a September release to start over.

She and Lisa Norton were friends, and she recalled that after Morales' second DUI, Norton told her to stop because of the risks.

Still, she remembers drinking and persuading herself she could drive from Longmont to Boulder to get home by driving slowly, paying extra attention to traffic signals and taking back roads. All three times, Longmont police arrested her.

"I am glad I got caught," she said. She said she has always enjoyed riding her bike. Now she believes she will make it a way of life.

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